David Ansen

The cruelly funny Margot at the Wedding shares many of the virtues of "Squid"--it's psychologically astute, sociologically dead on, refreshingly unformulaic--but it's a considerably tougher, less ingratiating movie. People who insist on likable, "sympathetic" protagonists may find it a bitter pill to swallow.

Flirts throughout with cliches, and some of the more melodramatic plot devices creak at the joints. Still, the potency of this pop romantic can't be denied. [24 Aug 1987]

This is first-rate, visceral filmmaking, no question: taut, watchful, free of false histrionics, as observant of the fear in the young terrorists' eyes as the hysteria in the passenger cabin, and smart enough to know this material doesn't need to be sensationalized or sentimentalized.

The Lover's rarefied sensibility takes getting used to; once its spell is cast, you won't want to blink.

The screenplay (by Bill Bryden, Steven Phillip Smith, Stacy and James Keach) is basically an assemblage of bits and pieces that doesn't build toward any real emotional payoff. Yet The Long Riders is still the best Western in many years -- it has the laconic elegance of a ritual. [02 Jun 1980, p.87]

Red Dragon is certainly an improvement on “Hannibal.” It has something the Ridley Scott movie didn’t -- a good story -- and it will no doubt keep the franchise rolling in dough.

Day-Lewis, who imbues Jack with a ravaged, Keith Richards charisma, is once again extraordinary.

Dick Tracy is a class act: simple, stylish, sophisticated, sweet.

The Freshman has a preposterous plot even the writer's mother couldn't believe, and it strains and creaks down the runway, but when this baby gets off the ground, we're talking seriously funny.

This vintage movie is just another reminder that when it comes to movie romance, there's nothing more satisfying than a broken heart. [20 Jun 2002]

Malick's magnificent, frustrating epic mixes fact and legend to conjure up a reverie about Pocahontas (Q'orianka Kilcher), her love for Capt. John Smith (Colin Farrell) and her crossing from one culture to another.

Powerful images hook you immediately.

His smart, raunchy movie offers no answers (how could it?), but it poses its questions with painfully hilarious honesty.

A fine, well-groomed entertainment, but the road it takes has already been well paved.

This is a fleet, funny family entertainment that should tickle parents as well as tykes.

When this historical adventure kicks in, it's thrilling in the way old-fashioned epics used to be, but its romanticism has a fierce, violent physicality that gives it a distinctively modern stamp.

Armageddon is as irresistible as it's indefensible.

Quest for Fire is diverting and well made, and kids should love it. Chong is delightful as the first feminist heroine. And as bloody and brutish as the fights are, the film is resoundingly sweet-natured at heart. [15 Feb 1982, p.61]

Saturated with a passion for jazz, "Round Midnight" plays upon the heart as dextrously as Gordon's huge, eloquent hands coax music from the instrument he calls Lady Sweets. [20 Oct 1986, p.78]

A one-of- a-kind horror movie: hilarious, a little scary and strangely poignant. Campbell’s cranky, valiant, sad-sack King is a soulfully funny creation.

The first-time writer-director, Englishman Richard Kwietniowski, has adapted Gilbert Adair's novel with wit, economy and a delicate understanding that the funniest comedies are played with dead seriousness.

The women in this smart, highly entertaining comedy don't pack guns, but relations between the sexes are such that a well-placed knee in the groin can come in handy.

Miller's strength, and his weakness, has always been his tendency to see things in black and white, which is what makes "The Crucible" moving, and also suspect. I recommend Hytner's movie highly, but a part of me resists a work that makes the audience feel as noble in our moral certainty as the characters it invites us to deplore. Some part of its power seems borrowed from the thing it hates.

With honesty, charm and an uncanny sympathy for all its characters, the film takes us deep inside the awkward and exhilarating experience of first love.

Mann, the executive producer of "Miami Vice," can be too stylish for his own good, but the movie holds the viewer all the way to the predictably explosive end. [25 Aug 1986, p.63]

The movie itself, like these guys, is defiantly old school -- confident, relaxed, professional.

With Saraband, the great writer-director has stepped back into the ring for one last epic wrestle with his demons. There is, as always, no easy outcome. But no one ever fought for higher emotional and spiritual stakes.

The movie crackles with the serio-comic tension of thin-skinned New Yorkers thrown together in a crisis.

Like the march itself--which is only briefly glimpsed--Get On the Bus' is conceived as a challenge to black men to take accountability for their lives. A sermon wrapped in a road movie, at its best it can stir the soul.

While the elements in this coming-of-age saga may seem familiar, Eszterhas brings a fresh, immigrant's-eye perspective to his tale.

To blends sentimentality, shoot-outs and cool humor into a bewitchingly entertaining brew.

Narnia, brightly lit and kid-friendly, has an appealingly old-fashioned feel to it. Adamson, codirector of "Shrek," wisely doesn't try to hip-ify the tale, leaving its curious blend of medieval pageantry, Christian fable and children's bedtime story intact.

A cliffhanger with no real ending. When the lights come up, think of it as the start of a six-month intermission. For better and worse, Reloaded leaves you hungry for more.

Slick, gaudily suave guilty pleasure of a movie.

The rage and sadness behind this film -- the first from Afghanistan since the Taliban's fall -- is matched by its artistry.

Downey and Favreau give the movie a quirky flavor it can call its own. For that we can be grateful.

This is not exactly standard children's fare, but kids (and their parents) should be smitten by its wit and wisdom.

Greenaway uses the screen rather like the calligraphers of the story use the body so that the film becomes a kind of visual "pillow book;" a multi-layered series of inscriptions and reflections with almost hypnotic power.

Using shadows and strikingly designed sounds, Pellington skillfully creates an atmosphere of otherworldly, invisible menace. Gere and Linney, both solid, dance around the edges of a romance.

No simple diatribe against capital punishment, it's a strong film, made stronger by two terrific performances.

Thanks to fine acting and its vividly unconventional protagonist, it pumps fresh blood into a conventional formula.

When it catches fire, this great-looking movie offers hilarious diversions.

Smart, informative and lively polemic.

The first test of a horror movie comes not the morning after but in the midst of the onslaught. By these standards, Monkey Shines is a white-knuckle triumph. Romero's film has its lurid, nonsensical lapses, but it touches some deep nerves. It's as unsettling as anything he's done. [08 Aug 1988, p.66]

Raises Hollywood's depiction of war to a new level.

Take this classical-farce premise, put it in the very accomplished hands of the neoclassical director Blake Edwards, and you have yourself a real comedy -not a mere grab bag of gags but a deliciously accelerating divertissement on the theme of role-playing, sexual and otherwise. [22 March 1982, p.84]

Year of the Dragon leaves itself wide open to attack -- it has huge flaws and absurdities -- and Cimino is responsible for most of them. But this revved-up, over-stuffed movie is undeniably alive, teeming with evidence of Cimino's gifts as a filmmaker and his gaffes as a thinker. It's dazzling, and it's dumb. [19 Aug 1985, p.69]

Mann vividly captures the nocturnal pulse of East L.A. in this taut, confined game of cat and mouse. In the homestretch the thrills get too generic and farfetched for their own good. But the first two thirds are a knockout.

This moving, engrossing work shows that Sayles is as valuable a chronicler of our past as he is of our present. [14 Sep 1987, p.82]

A sweet and satisfying fantasy that reinvents the myth of the Fountain of Youth. [24 June 1985, p.70]

Frost/Nixon works even better on screen. Director Ron Howard and Morgan, adapting his own play, have both opened up the tale and, with the power of close-ups, made this duel of wits even more intimate and suspenseful.

The comedy gets better, and more unpredictable, as it goes, and so do the performances.

This movie is about giving us a privileged glimpse of the Stones in action. It's a record of an astonishing musical chemistry that has been evolving, with no signs of calcification, for nearly five decades. As a bonus, there are delicious guest appearances by Buddy Guy and Jack White.

For a movie full of hairraising depictions of wife beating, What's Love Got To Do With It is a rousingly entertaining musical biopic. And that's what a movie about the unstoppable Tina Turner should be: sassy, playful, soulful and triumphant, like Tina herself. [21 Jun 1993, p.66]

[Stillman] has a keen sense of group dynamics and a fine comic ear.

In Lee's understandable eagerness to let a few rays of hope shine, the polemicist trips up the dramatist--movie conventions replace honest observation. But the passion of this raw, mournful urban epic remains, in spite of the false moves. [25 Sep 1995, p.92]

You may not swallow every coincidental encounter and hair's-breadth escape, but this crisp, complex thriller makes you care what happens every moment; Hackman brings such road-worn humanity to his part you may not realize until the end that this Everyman is a Superman in middle-age disguise. [4 Sept 1989, p.68]

[Douglas] is a superb (and underused) comic actor, one who knows that the secret of being funny is never begging for a laugh.

Explores both prepubescent and teen sexuality with an honesty that may make some people uncomfortable, which is a sign of its potency, and a badge of honor.

Juxtaposes beauty and horror to fashion a savage and lyrical cinematic poem.

The nutty thing is, by the end of this jolly, oddly compelling and genuinely suspenseful documentary, the ridiculousness of such notions seems open to genuine debate.

Rocky II may be superfluous, but it works. And it's successful in exactly the same way the original was - as an adroit mixture of grit, guts and treacle that whips the audience into a frenzy of satisfied wish fulfillment. [25 June 1979, p.81]

It's like a spectacular roadside accident: you can't turn away.

A streak of pitch-black humor, some bawdy detours and a touch of sanguine, sun-baked poetry Sam Peckinpah would have liked.

Seabiscuit may be too airbrushed for its own good, but in the end nothing can stop this story from putting a lump in your throat.

Australia is a shameless—and shamelessly entertaining--pastiche. It works because Luhrmann, a true believer in movie-movie magic, stamps it all with the force of his own extravagant, generous personality.

Perfectly reflects the range of this funny, disturbing and complex tale.

Unless you are suitably bent, you might notice that the movie has little continuity and a plot that is no more than a grab bag of familiar Cheech and Chong routines. If you're suitably prepared, probably none of this will matter. There is something irrepressibly good-natured about the peppery Cheech and the zonked-out Chone as they low-ride through East Los Angeles and Tijuana in pursuit of the eternal high... In this funky, slapdash and occasionally very funny movie, dope is not an issue, it's a way of life. [2 Oct 1978, p.86]

This time out the versatile Soderbergh has cast himself as a sleight-of-hand artist. He's made deeper films, but this carefree caper movie is nothing to sneeze at.

Punch-Drunk Love is one dark, strange-tasting sorbet, its sweetness shot through with startling, unexpected flavors. It’s a romantic comedy on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

A rancidly hilarious slice of Americana. [01 Jun 1981, p.91]

Smith startles us with raw emotional honesty.

Jordan is always best on his native Irish turf, and he's in grand mischievous form in this picaresque fable.

Bjork gives what may be the most wrenching performance ever given by someone who has no interest in being an actor.

School Ties doesn't offer much fresh insight on its subject, but it tells its familiar tale well, adapting the straight-forward virtues of '50s storytelling to evoke that mythical era to which Pat Buchanan and friends would like us all to return. Mandel isn't a bludgeoner; his young, fresh cast is mighty good; and, to its credit, the movie resists the impulse to wrap everything up with a smiley ending. Anti-Semitism didn't go away in the '50s; it just lowered its voice for a while.[21 Sept 1992, p.78]

Like the original, Flash Gordon has nothing on its mind but moving its jet-propelled plot from one fairy-tale setting to the next. It's nice to see a movie accomplish exactly what it sets out to do, with wit and spirit to boot. [08 Dec 1980, p.105]

A rousing tale of retribution that ties up the dangling threads with bold melodramatic flourish. [09 Nov 1987, p.77]

Gus Van Sant, working from the tangy, well-written script, gets so much humor, grit and emotional truth out of this tale that the familiar formulas behind it simply fall away.

Turning the pious cliches of World War II melodrama on their heads, Boorman has made his most dizzyingly funny movie, an anarchic celebration of family. The warmth that exudes from these turbulent recollections isn't a sentimental heat but a joyful one: Boorman's eyes see the foibles and betrayals of adult life, the casual savagery of children, and forgive all. It's an idyll set amidst urban rubble. [19 Oct 1987, p.84]

Woody Allen is back in sharp comic form, though it's likely that his abrasive black comedy Deconstructing Harry will alienate as many people as it tickles.

Cobb is a refreshingly spiky antidote to Cataclysm all the Hollywood paeans to the suffering glory of the game. Ty Cobb approached baseball as he approached life: take no prisoners and leave scorched earth behind you. His greatness and his monstrosity can't be untangled. Cobb allows us to honor his achievements, but with no false illusions. It puts the ball in our hands: if this is an American hero, we need to figure out why. [12 Dec 1994, p.72]

For action junkies, The Bourne Ultimatum will be like a hit of pure meth. It's bravura filmmaking in the jittery, handheld, frenetically edited Paul Greengrass style.

Instead of losing myself in the story, I often felt on the outside looking in, appreciating the craftsmanship, but one step removed from the agony on display. Revolutionary Road is impressive, but it feels like a classic encased in amber.

Steven Knight’s smart, if overly plotted, script delivers social insights tautly wrapped in genre thrills.

Every bit as tasteless, irreverent, silly and smart as the Comedy Central cartoon that catapulted creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone into the Hollywood catbird seat.

The secret of their endurance is not just in the grossness of their humor -- though their new film is even funkier and funnier than "Up in Smoke." As flipped out as their patchwork story gets, it always stays in touch with a very specific urban reality, a world where you make jokes out of taking a urine sample to your parole officer and find hilarity in Cheech's pathetic attempt to sing his naive Mexican-American protest song. [11 Aug 1980, p.69]

It’s too early to place Eminem alongside those Hollywood giants (Jimmy Cagney/John Garfield), but the promise is there. He understands the power of being still in front of a camera. Compact, volatile and burningly intense, he’s got charisma to spare.

Zwigoff doesn't hype up the gags, and his deliberately deadpan style gives even farfetched jokes an edge of reality.

What makes The In-Laws so engaging is not simply the escalating madness of Andrew Bergman's story (such whimsy could easily grow tiresome), but the deadpan counterpoint supplied by the two stars, who navigate their way through mounting disasters with an air of hilariously unjustified rationality. Bergman's script was tailor-made for Falk and Arkin, and they make the most of it. [02 Jul 1979, p.68]

A rousingly funny slapstick comedy about the day John, Paul, George and Ringo set off a tidal wave of adolescent hysteria in New York City. Surprisingly, nostalgia accounts for very little of the movie's charm. [01 May 1978, p.91]

This movie has teeth, and it's not afraid to bite. [6 July 1981, p.7]

This hothouse tale of grief, sex and betrayal is told with a cool detachment that renders it commendably unsentimental--and slightly remote.

A dizzying mixture of the sophisticated and the naive, the deft and the clumsy, Bulworth is overstuffed, excessive, erratic -- and essential.

Comic electricity.

The word for The Changeling is chilling. Medak doesn't pummel the audience with gore and Exorcist-type shock tactics. More than once, he raises real goose bumps using nothing more extraordinary than a bouncing rubber ball. [31 Mar 1980, p.82]

As brilliantly shot as it is brutally single-minded, this is a war movie shorn of all its usual accouterments: the battle is the plot.

Lively, likable and refreshingly unsensationalistic about the drugs and sex that come with the territory, this techno-propelled mash note to the rave spirit sticks to the surface.

Lurid, illogical and utterly off-the-wall, this funny-scary exercise in low-budget schlock is a marvelous orgy of cheap thrills, including a supernaturally sinister mortuary, a hideously wriggling severed finger, one furry flying creature, dwarfs from the Undead, and the goriest - indeed the only - blood-sucking flying steel ball in movie history. [16 April 1979, p.86]

A vital entertainment that struts confidently between comedy and drama.

Though a few scenes are amateurish and the lighting is less than polished, "The Wedding Banquet" is such a genial, openhearted sitcom that only a confirmed grump could resist it. [16 Aug 1993, p.61]

Schrader has never been one to coddle an audience, and this is as uncompromising a vision as he has given us.

In snuggling up so close to his heroine, Mazursky sacrifices some of the wild satrical highs we expect from him - the andante pacing could use a little more allegro (and a little less help from Bill Conti's overdone score). But we are more than rewarded by Muzursky's generosity and insight. He's burrowed deeper into the upper middle-class psyche than ever before, and if it's sometimes uncomfortable there, the unease is one we recognize as our own. [13 Mar 1978, p.75]

He’s (González Iñárritu) conjured up a dark, brutal vision of urban life that sticks to your skin like soot.

Intimate, moving and playful.

A meditation on love, faith and science in the guise of a thriller, the movie's a tad schematic, but thoroughly gripping.

Jarmusch's punk minimalist style, deadpan humor and delicious timing are all his own, and his oddball drifters, whose major goal in life is hanging out, are three slob existential stooges Sam Beckett might envy. You wouldn't choose to hunker down with them in real life, but they're great company on screen. These dead-end kids may be headed nowhere not so fast, but their oddball odyssey is headed straight for cult-movie heaven. [08 Oct 1984, p.87]

The Secret of NIMH is an ambitious and entertaining debut that will delight and terrify kids everywhere. If there are flaws in NIMH they are a product of its ambition: visually, moments when the animation is almost too busy to take in; dramatically, an eclectic and overstuffed plot that threatens the balance of the movie. But better a surfeit than a soporific. [12 July 1982, p.75]

One of the things that makes Signs such a refreshing summer movie is that it goes against almost all the grains of contemporary Hollywood razzle-dazzle filmmaking -- as did “The Sixth Sense.”

She's Gotta Have It, a black-and-white movie made on a shoestring by the 29-year-old black filmmaker Spike Lee, is fresh in both senses of the word -- sassy and original. [08 Sept 1986, p.65]

Manages to be simultaneously subversive and sweet.

A fast and furious feature film that starts at a gallop and never stops to catch its breath. [9 Aug 1993, p.57]

Has a flavor all its own-sweet, whimsical, homegrown. A quirky romantic for the 21st century, July finds humor and magic in places where no one has looked before.

The filmmakers are clearly in awe of the Chicks' fighting spirit. If you think Maines's original Bush remark was disrespectful, wait till you hear what she calls him here. Maines is not ready to make nice, and neither is this riveting documentary.

This true story, deftly embellished by writer Jeremy Brock and directed at a bracing English trot by John Madden, is a splendid showcase for its three superb leads. [28 July, 1997, p. 69]

The film is mostly successful in transporting the viewer to another age: the costumes, the body markings, the fierce Mayan masks, all feel right. And keeping the dialogue in subtitles was a smart move. Even better are the faces, which never fail to fascinate. But for all the anthropological research that went into the movie, what is Apocalypto trying to say?

It’s as formulaic as "The Sum of All Fears," but it feels fresher, hipper, less inflated.

As warm and lived-in as an old pair of boots, The Snapper is an honorable feel-good movie.

A clever, pleasingly sentimental tale of prehistoric times.

The Name of the Rose spins a whopping good tale, a medieval murder mystery that only those with seriously damaged attention spans will find hard to enjoy. [29 Sept 1986, p.63]

Leaner and meaner, "The Road Warrior" had more nonstop thrills. But Miller was right not to try to top that act: he's opted to expand the moral geography of his funk Wasteland. With crazy and beautiful Mel and Tina backed up by a raging gallery of mutant humanity, only a glutton could complain he didn't get his fill. [29 July 1985, p.58]

This is a movie that sticks its political neck out, that throbs with dread, paranoia and outrage, that doesn't coddle the audience by neatly tying things up.

If we must have teen movies, let them all be as sweet and seductive as Sollett's smartly observed romance.

Gloria is pure, unembarrassed jive--a hipster's lark of a movie--and Rowlands give a great jive artist's performance, straight-faced and charged with sly conviction. [06 Oct 1980, p.72]

A premise this preposterous must be carried off with unflappable comic conviction, and Cusack is just the right man for the job.

The juiciest battle here is Spidey vs. Spidey, or, if you prefer, superego vs. id. When Peter starts to go seriously bad, the movie becomes seriously fun.

If Animal House lacks the inspired tastelessness of the Lampoon's High School Yearbrook Parody, this is still low humor of a high order. [7 Aug 1978, p.85]

Let the Right One In unfolds with quiet, masterly assurance.

The Syrian Bride would be an out-and-out comedy were it set anywhere but in the Middle East.

The Coens abhor sentimentality, but behind the comic-book grotesqueries there's a disarming sweetness. Like "Blood Simple," this wild-card comedy knows where it's headed every inch of the way. It's a hoot and a half. [16 March 1987, p.73]

Mamet brings an unusual level of intelligence to this boys'-adventure formula, and an edgy understanding of the ongoing games of one-upmanship men play. After a rocky, dutifully expositional beginning, The Edge turns into an unusually gripping suspense movie, its peril all the more effective for being unfashionably low-tech.

Told from both women's points of view, this fascinating, if sometimes overwrought, tale packs a wallop.

As taut and exciting as many edge-of-your-seat Hollywood escape movies.

Hunter never exploits the material for cheap thrills -- his camera keeps a sober, clear eyed detachment. Detail by appalling detail, he creates a vivid, stunted world where banality and horror intermingle. "I cried when that guy died in Brian's Song," one of the girls says. "You'd figure I'd at least be able to cry for someone I hung around with." Some may gag on this daring, disturbing movie; few will be able to shake it off. [01 June 1987, p.69]

While Whale Rider is a doozy of a female-empowerment fantasy, it’s mercifully free of any feminist smugness.

How you feel about Milk may depend on whether you've seen Rob Epstein's great, Oscar-winning 1984 documentary "The Times of Harvey Milk." Van Sant's movie lacks that film's shattering emotional impact. (Rage is not a color in the director's palette.) For those coming to Milk's story for the first time, however, this will be a rousing experience.

The first hour of Toback's movie bounces and sparkles like a stone skipping on water. Downey is such an ingenuous con man it's impossible not to smile at his chutzpah, and Ringwald reveals a grave, grown-up solidity we haven't seen before. [28 Sept 1987, p.77]

Ulee's Gold possesses an attribute that's increasingly rare in American filmmaking, independent or Hollywood: call it soul.

Roxanne is a charmer. Sweet-spririted, relaxed, it's a sun-dappled romantic comedy that doesn't scream Laugh! [22 June 1987, p.73]

The faces of Noonan and Sillas reflect everything they're feeling. This disquieting duet of high anxiety rests entirely on their shoulders, and they're superb. [12 Sep 1994, p.60]

Everything about Manhattan Murder Mystery (except his recent fondness for the handheld camera) harks back to the earlier, more playful Allen style. Imagine a middle-aged Annie Hall stumbling into a film noir. At first, the whiny badinage seems too familiar--or maybe it's just that nowadays it takes a little time to cast the real Woody out of mind and let the screen persona take over. But the good news is that once the gears of the plot kick in, Allen's expert comic timing proves as beguiling as ever.

Director Kaplan has a generous, open-eyed affection for these quirky, hungry characters that he obviously wants to share. Smart host that he is, he doesn't over sing their praises. You warm to this movie at your own sweet speed. [31 Oct 1983, p.83]

A delirious example of grrrl power, Hong Kong style.

Novelist Andre Dubus's plotting may be too much for a two-hour movie. But the story's details feel fresh. The vivid clarity of the images, the compressed fury of the tale, are impossible to get out of your head.

A smooth mixture of satire and sentiment that owes an obvious debt to "The Apartment," not to mention "Jerry Maguire."

Hamer, a meticulous observer himself, is a minimalist with heart.

Keeps you hanging on every twist and turn of its wilder-than-fiction plot.

Defies all laws of gravity in its pursuit of thrills and laughs—and it's so disarmingly eager to please that only a stone-faced kung fu purist could object.

Lucas manages to turn the audience's familiarity to his advantage: like a jigsaw puzzle whose final form has always been known, the fun is in discovering how the last pieces fit.

Written with an acute ear by Barbara Turner (Leigh's mother) and directed by Ulu Grosbard, it's a resonant, grittily specific film.

Gets a lot of the details right. Outside Providence is a sweet, funny little movie.

Unfaithful shows what a powerful, sexy, smart filmmaker Lyne can be. It’s a shame he substitutes the mechanics of suspense for the real suspense of what goes on between a man and a woman, a husband and a wife.

Suspended between the brutally graphic and flights of lyrical fancy, Pan's Labyrinth unfolds with the confidence of a classical fable, one that paradoxically feels both timeless and startlingly new.

Punchline is never less than compelling, never less than smart. Seltzer and company have made a disturbingly entertaining movie about the manic-depressive world of comedy. [26 Sept 1988, p.58]

This spirited rerun, neatly mixing parody and panache, squeezes a surprising amount of fun out of the old war horse.

Though acid is dropped, groupies are bartered like poker chips and rock-star egos flare like fireworks, what comes through is the relative innocence of that era.

A very stylish and sexy film noir, a tale of obsessive love neatly balanced between exploitation movie and art film. [23 May 1983, p.54]

Despite an overwrought finale, this stylish horror film is genuinely creepy. See it before the inevitable Hollywood remake.

Casualties of War is De Palma's best work in years -- it's powerful, meticulous filmmaking -- yet it may be a movie easier to admire than love. Ultimately the drama seems too cut and dried; Eriksson wrestle with his conscience, but the audience never has to. "Casualties" has the visceral impact of a good movie; it lacks the resonance of a great one.

It pushes the audience's buttons with Pavlovian finesse, manufacturing industrial-strength adrenaline. First-time director Frank Marshall has long been Steven Spielberg's producer, and he's learned the master's lessons well.

As we watch the astonishing NASA footage, they eloquently evoke the optimism, anxiety and excitement of those voyages.

Superman II is a success, a stirring sequel to the smash of '79. Whether you will prefer it to the original is like choosing between root beer and Fresca. They're both bubbly, but the flavor is different. What the follow-up doesn't have is the epic lyricism of Richard Donner's version; it's harder edged, fleeter on its feet, less reverential. [22 June 1981, p.87]

More sweet than savage, this amiable farce creates laughs with old-pro efficiency.

Thanks to the superb cast and Mottola's deft touch, this modest-looking comedy proves quite memorable.

A hilarious, rousing musical comedy set at a summer camp where NOBODY plays sports and EVERYBODY worships Stephen Sondheim.

If you like your summer popcorn movies laced with a little poisoned butter, Gremlins is not to be missed. [18 June 1984, p.90]

A wonderfully quirky cast under Francis Ford Coppola's direction makes this one of the more enjoyable John Grisham movies.

Shankman and his screenwriter, Leslie Dixon, prove you can make a lightweight Broadway musical into big movie fun.

This German movie, with its lush cinematography and lovely score, has the sturdiness of an old-fashioned Hollywood epic. What isn’t Hollywood is Link’s refusal to tell the audience how to feel at every moment.

Where so many comic-book movies feel as disposable as Kleenex, the passionate, uncynical Hulk stamps itself into your memory. Lee’s movies are built to last.

Sleek, moody, violent and romantic, Sharky's Machine is not only the most seductive Burt Reynolds movie in many a moon. Reynolds is turning into a stylish director, and he sets a distinctive tone of languid menace. Though he can be graphically brutal, Reynolds isn't after realism, but a kind of gauzy, slightly baroque romanticism. [28 Dec 1981, p.64]

Nair’s stereotype-shattering movie -- like the polymorphous culture it illuminates -- borrows from Bollywood, Hollywood and cinema verite, and comes up with something exuberantly its own.

Structured like a farce but filmed like a Qaalude dream, this marvelously performed fairy tale packs a lot of style into its minuscule budget. [19 Nov 1984, p.135]

Cusack is a master at playing smart, frazzled, self-flagellating hipsters, and the movie, propelled by his arias of angst, lets him strut his best stuff.

Hilarious, satirical and melancholy, Rudo y Cursi may not go as deep as "Y Tu Mamá También," but it has a similar vivacity. It turns this tale of brotherly bonds and sibling rivalry--a veiled allegory of the Cuarón boys themselves?--into one of the year's most memorable offerings.

In this gorgeously melancholic fresco of love affairs, Tony Leung Chiu Wai plays a womanizing pulp-fiction writer in '60s Hong Kong.

Will be remembered as a vintage Rohmer harvest.

As eye-popping as anything Pixar has done. But Cars inspires more admiration than elation. It dazzles even as it disappoints. This time around, John Lasseter and his codirector, the late Joe Ranft, seem more interested in dispensing Life Lessons than showing us a roaring good time.

It’s like a nightmare that follows you around in daylight: you can’t quite decode it, you can’t shake it, you can’t stop turning it over and over in your mind. This is one queasily powerful movie.

Chocolat is a seriocomic plea for tolerance, gift-wrapped in the baby blue colors of a fairy tale and served up with a sybaritic smile.

Like most of this refreshingly subtle film, it's not what you expect, and it's not something you've seen before.

If this Popsicle of a movie melts long before it's over, the first half has more good laughs than all of “Sweethearts.”

As a history lesson (Depression 101), Cinderella Man feels a bit secondhand. As a true-grit tale of redemption, however, it lands one solid body punch after another.

A wonderfully taut cat-and-mouse thriller.

Foxes is a funny, rueful, sexy little movie about coming of age in a junk-food culture. [10 Mar 1980, p.88]

Prelude to a Kiss has made the voyage from Broadway to Hollywood with its literacy, charm and full heart very much intact.

The Yugoslav-born Tesich is a wry romantic, a moonstruck jester, and his tendency toward excess is nicely complemented by Britisher Yates's crisp but delicate professionalism. With a superb cast at their disposal, they've taken a somewhat preposterous film noir plot and enriched it with quirky, meaty characterizations to produce a nervous comedy of menace about class distinctions and romantic and political obsession. [02 Mar 1981, p.81]

Like many of Winterbottom's movies, it falls a step short of its full potential. Its tact is both its strength and its weakness. The climax feels rushed: it's the rare movie these days that feels too short.

Compromising Positions has acting talent to burn and enough drollery to pass the time quite pleasantly. [9 Sept 1985, p.90]

It's a minimalist almost-love story told with epic flourishes.

Only near the end does the mix of melodrama, mush and message get out of hand.

Ultimately achieves that lump in the throat that is the romantic comedy's promised land.

It's strange energy - sexy, morbid, not quite human. There's an awful lot of blood in the movie and a lot of flesh, but there's little flesh and blood. The Fury is the work of a brilliant, droll, sadistic puppeteer. [20 Mar 1978, p.93]

Stillman remains a deftly funny portrait painter of the young, willfully self-involved Anglo-Saxon male.

Director Robert Zemeckis and writer Bob Gale assume you've seen the original and are ready to swallow whatever zany time-travel notion they offer. They're not wrong. As unapologetically broad and silly as this sequel it, it's also a good deal of fun, and its relentless velocity is part of the joke. [4 Dec. 1989, p.78]

This is a good introduction to the affable Chan persona. The comedy is broad, the inner-city Americana hilariously off-base, and the English dubbing may prove disconcerting to U.S. audiences. But the cheesiness is part of the fun.

Gordon's back at it in From Beyond, which puts the audience in the same pickle: do I laugh or do I scream? Both. [17 Nov 1986, p.89]

Like a TV movie, Suspect is aggressively and glibly topical, paying lip service to the plight of the homeless and the Vietnam vet. But the cast, which includes John Mahoney, E. Katherine Kerr and Joe Mantegna, is first rate, and the pace rarely flags. Take one salt tablet and enjoy. [26 Oct 1987, p.86]

What first feels like thin skit material gets funnier and sweeter. Damon and Kinnear make a terrific team.

The Madame Bovary-in-suburbia motif may sound familiar, yet the unusual mix of satire and melodrama feels fresh. Not everything works (beware the football scenes), but this adaptation of Tom Perrotta's novel is hard to shake off.

If Barbarosa is a decidedly bumpy ride, its quirky ambitions are always interesting. Schepisi doesn't play safe, but he's a real filmmaker -- even his mistakes are arresting. [02 Aug 1982, p.62]

The script, by Richard LaGravenese and Marie Weiss, veers unevenly between sharp, sophisticated malice and crowd-pleasing low humor, but director Ted Demme (Jonathan's nephew) keeps the laughs coming at a brisk pace. [14 Mar 1994, p.72]

Until the very end, when the script turns to heavy-handed pontificating, writer John Hopkins and director Bob Clark spin a decent, gruesome yarn, tying together the Ripper murders, political radicalism, bizarre Masonic rituals, royal indiscretions and government cover-ups. [26 Feb 1979, p.81]

Robbins's gutsy directorial debut isn't seamless art, but so what? After a summer in Hollywood fantasyland, at last we have an American movie that rattles our cage-and pokes a sharp spear into the body politic. Now that's entertainment.

The wonder of Invictus is that it actually went down this way.

Judged purely as an adventure story, it delivers enough thrills and violence to keep the action crowd engrossed. It also has enough social resonance to take us right back into those dark; schizophrenic years. [21 Aug 1978, p.66]

The French Lieutenant's Woman is one of the most civilized and provocative movies of the year, but it falls just short of greatness. Perhaps Reisz and Pinter are too innately reticent to wring the last drop of emotional power from Fowles's story. [21 Sep 1981, p.96]

This affable, well-built comedy is Reitman's best since Ghostbusters.

Somewhat raggedly directed by Richard Benjamin from an often witty June Roberts script, Mermaids is a likable coming-of-age comedy that can't quite decide how real it wants to be. In its weakest moments, it abandons psychological logic for fits of the cutes. But see it for Ryder, Cher and Ricci: they make this oddball family memorable. [17 Dec 1990, p.70]

To Norman Jewison's credit, the film of Agnes of God releases some of the hot air and gets right down to melodramatic business. Opened up and streamlined by Pielmeier, reset in wintry Quebec and cleanly shot by Sven Nykvist, the movie is a respectably engrossing detective story in theological garb (and not unlike Jewison's 1984 "A Soldier's Story" in form). [9 Sept 1985, p.89]

With a volatile combination of passion and bad manners, Araki ushers an old formula into the age of AIDS, and gives it new meaning. [31 Aug 1992, p.68]

Dudley Moore is the comic bubble beneath her solemn sultriness, and Unfaithfully Yours, though a slow starter, eventually works up a full head of comic steam. [05 Mar 1984, p.81]

It's a marvelous premise, and Crudup's serpentine performance has a venomous grace. But Jeffrey Hatcher's screenplay too often sacrifices psychological insight for bogus theatricality.

There is enough enchantment in this big, generous, flawed movie for most everybody. [24 Sep 1984, p.85]

"The Search for Spock" is everything it ought to be: solemn and shlocky and rousing and heartfelt, like all good reunions. For those whose cup of tea this is, drink deep and enjoy. [11 June 1984, p.80]

What holds the movie together is the fiercely self-contained commitment of Day-Lewis's performance and the palpable chemistry between him and Watson.

The bottom lineis that "Footloose" has a lively, sweet, infectious spirit, and for that one is willing to overlook some clunky scenes, fuzzy motivations, gratuitous brawls and the failure to evoke this town with any sociological coherence. It works because Bacon, always a fine actor, and Singer make a golden and winning couple; because Lithgow invests his ogreish character with troubled and compassionate shadings; because of Christopher Penn's scene-stealing performance as Bacon's naive lug of a friend; because the rocking sound track features hot new songs like "Let's Hear It for the Boy," performed by Deniece Williams; and because everyone, fundamentalists excepted, will identify with the kids. [20 Feb 1984, p.78]

Director Castle has studied his Spielberg well. While the movie may be composed of borrowed parts, it remains bouncy and good-natured throughout. Guest has charm and a deft comic touch, and Stewart is lovely as his girl. [30 July 1984, p.80]

Flaws and all, this may be Spike's most purely enjoyable movie, and his best looking

You cheer the good guys, gasp at the cliffhangers, hiss the villains and leave the theater with an old-fashioned sense of satisfaction. It may not be great filmmaking -- it's certainly not for purists -- but it's definitely good fun. [24 June 1991, p.60]

In keeping with a morality tale on the excesses of wealth and power, it is extravagantly confusing, grandiosely paranoid, flamboyantly absurd and more than a little fun. Though it utterly lacks the internal consistency that "good" movies require, as a wild-goose chase it maintains a certain lunatic fascination. [04 Jun 1979, p.76]

Prick Up Your Ears is a bold piece of work -- satiric, melancholy, free of cant. It's a post-Orton movie in every sense: without his work at the theatrical barricades 20 years ago a movie like this wouldn't have been possible. [20 Apr 1987, p.89]

Entertaining but farfetched, Spy Game might have looked less meretricious a few months back. But the real world has sabotaged its pretense of authenticity. Enjoy it for what it is, a fleet, handsome fantasy of globe-hopping blond demigods.

With Dillon in the movie, you might expect another girl-chasing beach movie. But the evocation of the nouveau riche club, and of adolescence itself, is closer to early Philip Roth than to Spring Break. [31 Dec 1984, p.65]

Ultimately, Quills descends into overwrought melodrama. But at its bright and bawdy best, it bubbles with subversive wit.

Director Michael Lehmann ("Heathers") nimbly keeps this airy concoction afloat.

It’s a movie for movie lovers -- playful, hip and light as a feather.

The Jerk is a kind of post-psychedelic Jerry Lewis movie -- Broad, dirty and juvenile, but definitely hip to its own dumbness. Half the jokes fall flat on their face, but when they score they're laugh-out-loud funny. Almost invariably, the best routines are non sequiturs -- off-the-wall riffs where Martin fixates with dopey brilliance on a subject that has nothing to do with the plot. [17 Dec 1979]

A powerful and moving experience -- once it overcomes its clunky, badly written and clichéd first act.

Where the original gave you something to chew on, the sequel is more interested in chewing on you.

As drama, The Dark Crystal comes fully alive only at its rousing climax, and it's hampered by the Ken Doll blandness of our hero. As a bestiary, however, it is bountiful -- a prodigious and amusing parade of things that do much more than go bump in the night. [27 Dec 1982, p.61]

While there are few huge laughs, the very lack of pushiness in Harold Ramis's direction comes as comic relief. [8 Aug 1983, p.55]

Subtlety is not the draw here: condom jokes and toilet humor alternate with car crashes and machine-gun killings. Yet the movie has a bouncy, comic-book appeal: sadism has rarely been so good-natured. [17 July 1989, p.53]

A thriller set on an Indian reservation in the 1970s, Thunderheart has both passion and power, enough to compensate for its sometimes murky plotting and a fair dose of melodramatic hokum.

It may sound sordid, but Arteta manages to bounce from brutality to comedy with only a few missteps -- and without the sweaty moralism that usually attends melodrama. The low-budget Star Maps may not be fully realized, but it's fully alive. [28 July 1997, p.69]

Presumed Innocent is a slow fuse of a movie. It never quite explodes with the resonance Pakula intends. It tries too hard to be important. But the story it tells is a good one, and once it's got its hooks in you, there's no turning away. [30 July 1990, p.56]

It's preposterous, but never dull: Scott whips the action into a taut, tasty lather.

The Stepfather has its thin, B-movie stretches, but it's a smart B movie, with a sly satirical edge. And when the bottom falls out of Jerry's dream, watch out: the movie gets downright hair-raising. [27 Feb 1987, p.79]

Director Charles ("The Mask") Russell is no James Cameron. He can produce a requisite amount of suspense and mayhem..., but his filmmaking is strictly B-movie generic. [01 Jul 1996 Pg.62]

Improbable as some of the plot may be, Lumet's movie -- directed with artful simplicity -- strikes powerful emotional chords. Running on Empty also happens to be the year's best teen romance: quirky Lorna (Martha Plimpton), in stubborn rebellion against her family's Wasp propriety, is a delightfully real teenager. [03 Oct 1988, p.57]

Doesn't add up to any big deal. But it's a likable, lively little ditty -- one theme, some clever variations -- that never wears out its welcome.

This movie is so unself-consciously wholesome it's almost Gumpian.

Anyone who feels immune to the charisma of Elvis Presley should immediately see This Is Elvis. If you are not transfixed by his sexual aura, his liquid musical ease, his promiscuous stylistic range and his mysterious mixture of shyness and vulgarity, chances are you've been living at odds with the second half of the twentieth century. [04 May 1981, p.44]

What Mad Hot Ballroom lacks in depth, it more than makesup for in charm and vibrancy.

Ambitious, unsettling, funny and perhaps too smart for its own good. With so much on its satirical agenda, it tends to spin out of orbit. [9 Nov 1987]

If the truth be told, my eagerness to sit through a sequel to "Romancing the Stone" only slightly surpassed my desire to revisit my periodonist. Surprise: The Jewel of the Nile, the further adventures of romance novelist Joan Wilder (Kathleen Turner) and adventurer Jack Colton (Michael Douglas), is a good night at the movies. [16 Dec 1985, p.82]

The tale is a bit too insular and claustrophobic for its own good: in the end these characters lack the depth and complexity to resonate deeply. The pleasures of The Dreamers stay mostly on the surface. But when the surface is as stylish and sexy as this, it's hard to complain.

The viewer finds himsel falternating between awe at the director's courage, energy and dedication, and horror at his monomania. [18 Oct 1982, p.95]

Frances McDormand, as the lone female union rep, and Richard Jenkins, as Josie’s angry miner dad, cut through the predictability.

Droll, sweet-tempered and lackadaisical, it's a shaggy-dog story with Nicholson playing the shaggy dog. It turns Western conventions on their heads not out of satirical anger but simply to charm the pants off the audience. A little less coyness, and a lot more John Belushi (as a Mexican deputy), would have helped. Still, at a time when most comedy comes straight out of the bathroom, the quirky, civilized pleasures of Nicholson's film are not to be sneezed at. [09 Oct 1978, p.94]

Plausibility is not the movie's strongest suit, but Phil Alden Robinson's enjoyable caper makes up for its gaps in logic with its breezy tone and its technological razzledazzle.

This visually stunning movie serves up generous dollops of designer creepiness.

The remarkable thing about Jarrold's movie is how much of the book it manages to capture.

This demented toyshop of a movie is a bit of a mess, but it's a visionary mess. Of how many sequels can that be said?

The preposterous plot is riddled with holes, and Patton, as the psychotic homosexual aide, badly overplays his hand. Nonetheless, Australian-born director Roger Donaldson does a bangup job tightening the suspense screws inside the Pentagon. Costner, much more vibrant than he was allowed to be in "The Untouchables," brings great dash and conviction to material that probably doesn't deserve it, and Hackman finds pockets of humanity in his badguy role. The result is taut, stylish and, for those willing to suspend about three tons of disbelief, a good deal of fun. [24 Aug 1987, p.60]

Goes on too long, and much of it is hooey, but it’s hard not to have a good time.

When the dust settles, you may well suspect you've been taken for a sentimental ride, which is not what one normally expects from director John Huston. What he does bring to Evan Jones and Yabo Yablonsky's proficient script is his confident, unhurried pacing and his ease in mixing the professional actors and professional soccer players into a seamless ensemble. [10 Aug 1981, p.69]

Defies any expectations you bring to it. There are sights in Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein's eye-opening documentary that will confirm and confound both right and left.

Director Stuart Rosenberg and screenwriter W. D. Richter have a strong, grim, angry story to tell, and the urgency of their convictions overcomes the frequent clumsiness and confusion of the telling. Unsparing in its evocation of brutality, and unswerving in its commitment to Brubaker's radical, uncompromising ideals, the film at its best provokes a powerful sense of tension and outrage. [23 June 1980, p.75]

Of course, hanging over this ironic tale is the deeper historical irony--that many of the "good guy" rebels Charlie is funding (and we're cheering) will become our mortal enemies...It's as if "Titanic" ended with a celebratory shipboard banquet, followed by a postscript: by the way, it sank.

For a number of reasons The Duchess isn't all it could have been. It's fun, but falls short of fabulous.

If The Pope doesn't fly Sinatra-high or dig Scorsese-deep, it is an appealing commercial movie with a gritty sense of the city, an effective narrative drive and a very watchable cast of pungent performers. [25 June 1984, p.68]